The August 30th Seattle Times heralded Sound Transit’s modern wonder: “How light rail floats on the lake.” It typified the paper’s Traffic Lab detailing how it “works” rather than what it “does”. Another example of the paper’s project “that explores the region’s policies that determine how we get around and how billions of dollars in public money are spent”.
The article “suggests” the Traffic Lab project receives substantial support from Sound Transit. (It's the only Seattle Times "project that doesn't mention its outside financial support.) For example, the article details how “light rail ridership systemwide has reached 175,000, a boost of almost 50,000 boardings”. Yet neglects to mention that Sound Transit’s 2 Line ridership reported only boarded 1375 in July.
Multiple posts on this blog have detailed that the lack of light rail ST3 extension sustainability if it’s based on the assumption that their cost wouldn’t exceed “derived benefit”or burden our grandchildren.
Another example of light rail problems was the August 24th Jake and Spike, Kiro FM radio show, ‘Sound Transit is a disease’. The two spar over whether the region’s massive transit investment is worth it. It included the Washington Policy Center Director analysis “Transit ridership across the Puget Sound region is down 10.5% since 2015, even as the population has grown by 14% and transit funding has nearly doubled from $2.6 billion to $4.7 billion”
The TPC director analysis found that total boardings across Metro, Sound Transit, Community Transit, Pierce Transit, and Everett Transit dropped from 176.3 million in 2015 to 157.7 million in 2025. Even Sound Transit, which opened major light rail extensions during that period, reported a 9% decrease in passenger miles. Transit mode share now sits below 3% of all regional trips, with light rail carrying less than 1%,
The bottom line is the TPC report is just another example of those detailing the failure of Sound Transit’s Modern Wonder.
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